Sony Executives Puzzled Over High PS4 Sales

Published By : 21 Aug 2014 |Published By : QYRESEARCH

Sony’s latest gaming console, the PlayStation 4, has already sold almost 10 million units since its launch in late 2013. The company’s sales executives however, do not know why the console is selling so much.

The executives fear that the above-average sales trajectory could spell an early burn and result in large losses in the later stages.

Shuhei Yoshida, Sony Worldwide Studios’ president, remarked over the console’s booming success, and is trying to investigate exactly which features in the PS4 are causing consumers to opt for it over the Xbox One. While console sales are also dependent on which game titles are released on it, current charts show that most of the top selling games are available on both consoles.

The Sony PlayStation Vita, Wii U, and the Nintendo 3DS, all share a common fate that Yoshida is pointing to: they all had extremely positive debuts, but failed to sell post the initial demand. Only Nintendo could manage sales of the 3DS, but only after heavy price cuts. An early burn-out causes large losses for a company.

Yoshida also mentioned that the early sales could be because of the core gamer group buying their consoles early on instead of waiting for a favorable title to be released. This could make the market unpredictable in later stages, after the core consumer group has been exhausted. This means that the later stages will be dominated by the “casual” gamer group, who are more price-conscious and don’t spend too much on buying titles.